


Conquest for the careless

by ExultedShores



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Betrayal, Drunk Sex, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Heartbreak, Low Chaos (Dishonored)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-26 00:40:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12047706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExultedShores/pseuds/ExultedShores
Summary: You have pretty eyes, Thomas. Just like my Deirdre.The first time it happens, it’s the Fugue Feast, and she is completely wasted. He isn’t, but he lets it happen anyway.





	Conquest for the careless

**Author's Note:**

> This whole thing was born from the simple fact that both Thomas and Deirdre have blue eyes and blonde hair in my headcanon.
> 
> I regret ~~everything~~ nothing.

The first time it happens, it’s the Fugue Feast, and she is completely wasted.

He isn’t, but he lets it happen anyway.

He is the only Whaler left at the base, like he is every year. Daud and some others are out on the job, the Feast giving them ample opportunity to take down high-profile targets. The nature of the holiday basically grants people like them immunity, and their blue-blooded targets often visit desolate places where they normally wouldn’t be caught dead – except they will be, this time. Dead, that is.

The remaining Whalers were given leave by Daud to enjoy Fugue to the fullest, as they are every year, with only one condition: one of them has to stay behind (and sober enough to function) to ensure their base isn’t plundered (because they could become victims of robbery just as easily as anyone else) and to keep their home from being trashed by one of their own (like it was six years ago, when Feodor thought it a good idea to bring back a blood ox).

Like every year, Thomas volunteered for the task.

He doesn’t care for the Fugue Feast, never understood what all the fuss was about. The freedom to do whatever he wants, to commit whatever crimes he has to, is already his every day. Why his brothers think it necessary to get piss drunk and fuck everything that moves during the brief time outside of the calendar is completely beyond him.

He would much prefer to be on the job with Daud, but their Master has made it a rule to only take the novices with him during Fugue. It’s good practice for them, with the security almost non-existent and their targets often far too drunk to protect themselves. And besides Thomas, none of the more experienced assassins are unhappy with their momentary respite.

Well, none except Billie.

She hates the Fugue Feast with a passion, though she’s never told anyone why. She always goes out, and she always gets drunk, but that’s all she does. Dimitri learned that the hard way when he tracked her down one Fugue, intending to take advantage of her alcohol-induced state. He walked around with a funny limp for weeks after, and his legs were perfectly fine.

Billie tried staying behind with Thomas one year, but it had taken mere hours before she was driven crazy by the lack of alcohol. She’d left quickly, muttering obscenities at Daud and his ridiculous rules, snatching one of the boss’ bottles of Old Dunwall on the way out.

Billie always goes out, and Billie always gets drunk, but that year, she comes back early.

Thomas nearly drops his book in surprise when she transverses sloppily through the window, crashing herself into the low table where they sometimes play Nancy. She curses, loudly, spilling some whiskey from the bottle clutched in her fist as she rights herself.

“Billie,” Thomas calls to her, calmly marking the page of his book. She isn’t the first intoxicated Whaler he’s had to sort out during the Fugue, and she won’t be the last. “You’re drunk.”

“ _You’re_ drunk,” Billie counters eloquently, pointing a few inches to the left of Thomas. “ _I’m_ fine.”

“You aren’t fine,” Thomas says as he covertly loads his wristbow with a sleep dart. If push comes to shove, he won’t hesitate to use it. Especially not after the year Jenkins pulled her sword on him. “Go outside or sleep it off, one or the other.”

Billie responds by taking a long swig from her bottle. “You’re such a drag, Thomas,” she says, drawing out the word ‘drag’ unnecessarily long.

Thomas does not dignify that with a response.

“You should lighten up,” Billie continues, completely oblivious to Thomas’ rigid posture and loaded wristbow. “Have a drink!”

She releases the bottle, and it falls at her feet, miraculously not breaking but still spilling Old Dunwall absolutely everywhere. Thomas groans involuntarily. Someone will be spending an hour scrubbing that off the floor, and judging from the fact that Billie is currently humming ‘Drunken Whaler’ off-key, it isn’t going to be her.

She sways along to her own song, and for a moment, Thomas just stops and watches her, because he has never seen her like this, so carefree, and it strikes him just how beautiful she is when she isn’t trying to scowl the world away.

Then she trips over her own two feet and Thomas instinctively transverses to catch her before she falls. He would have one heck of a time explaining to Daud he needs to find a new second because Thomas allowed Billie to hit her head on the sharp corner of the table.

She pushes him away, stumbling upright. “I can stand,” she says stubbornly, because even the alcohol cannot quell her headstrong spirit.

Not two seconds later she tips over again, and Thomas sighs heavily as he steadies her. “I think you should go to bed, Billie.”

She turns sharply, eyes full of fire, and Thomas is sure she’s about to tell him off. But she stops, staring at him not unlike the way he looked at her mere moments ago, and he finds his breath catching in his throat.

“You have pretty eyes, Thomas,” she slurs then, and he’s close enough to smell the Old Dunwall on her breath. “Just like my Deirdre.”

That should be his cue to pull away from her, to put some distance between them. Heck, it should be his cue to shoot her with that sleep dart. But he stays put like the fool he is, and when he feels her lips on his he knows he’s a goner.

In retrospect, he remembers very little of how they got to the small bedroom that comes with the position of Daud’s second, or how they got undressed, or how she managed to get rid of the dart in his wristbow without him noticing.

But he does remember how her lips trailed kisses down his collarbone, how her hands tangled into his hair to force him to look at her, how her small but shapely breasts bounced as she rode him into oblivion.

He also remembers Daud chewing him out for leaving the spilled bottle of whiskey on the floor and putting him on cleaning duty for the next week.

It was worth it, though.

* * *

The second time it happens, they’re both sober.

That is not an improvement.

For a time after the Fugue, Billie avoids him masterfully, which, granted, isn’t all that hard considering she’s Daud’s second and therefore so busy she barely spends time at the base in the first place, but it still scares Thomas shitless. Billie doesn’t avoid people when she’s upset with them; Billie goes right up to them and tells them exactly why they should go fuck themselves. The fact that she can hardly look him in the eye and absolutely refuses to be alone with him makes Thomas believe he’s crossed a line he can never go back over, no matter how hard he tries.

Worse is that he knows he deserves it. He took advantage of Billie in her beautiful intoxicated state – no matter that she was the one who kissed him, who took him to her bedroom, who undressed him, who topped him, because he had been the sober one, and he should have known better.

He wants nothing more than to apologise, but whenever she sees him approach she somehow manages to vacate the room in seconds. It gets so bad some of their fellow Whalers start to take notice.

“What’d you do, Thom, fucked her and hung her out to dry?” Aedan one day manages to get eerily close to the truth without even realising it, too busy snickering at his own clever joke to notice the colour drain from Thomas’ face.

It’s Misha who comes to his defence. “Not everyone is as vile as you, Aedan. For Void’s sake, Thomas would never do a thing like that.”

Funny how that manages to make him feel even worse.

It isn’t until two months after the Fugue when he finally manages to speak with her – or rather, when she finally allows him to speak with her. He catches her in the dusty attic of their base at that time, an abandoned hagfishery close to the shore. The lot of them mostly stay away from the attic, which was packed with rotting hagfish when they first arrived. They cleared those out, of course, but the odour remains. Thomas can still smell it.

Yet there Billie is, sitting cross-legged on the floor in the middle of the room, staring at the little tin she holds in her lap. She doesn’t acknowledge him, doesn’t even seem to notice him, which is odd in and of itself, because Billie notices everyone and everything all the time. Thomas isn’t entirely sure what to do. Should he clear his throat, make his presence known, or would she bolt if he did? Should he wait for her to notice him, or should he just launch into his apology and hope she will stay to listen? Should he grab her left hand to stop her from transversing – no, that would just result in a punch to the gut. Should he –

“If you were on the job, your target would be halfway to Pandyssia by now.”

Thomas starts at the sound of her voice, and then says the only thing he can. “I’m sorry.”

By way of response, she holds out her tin to him. “You want a honey cake?”

“A what now?”

“A honey cake,” Billie says calmly, as if this is not the most awkward conversation Thomas has ever had, and flips open the lid to reveal a dozen perfect little cakes, rich brown in colour and smelling deliciously of fresh honey with a whiff of cinnamon. “Kent made them for me. For my anniversary.”

Right. Two years ago today, Billie was made Daud’s second. Leave it to Kent to commemorate occasions like that.

Like everything Kent cooks, the cakes look scrumptious, but Thomas shakes his head. “It’s not my anniversary.”

Billie plucks a cake from the tin and all but pushes it into his hands. “Take the damn cake.”

Thomas takes the damn cake.

He eats it, too. It’s heavenly.

Billie, however, doesn’t eat, even though the treats are hers, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out something is bothering her. After only a brief hesitation, Thomas sits down next to her on the floor. “Are you alright?”

Her face hardens, and Thomas prepares for her to brush him off like she always does when someone asks about her wellbeing. But then she sighs, and shakes her head. “No.”

For a heartbeat, it seems like a good idea to embrace her, to hold her in his arms and tell her everything is going to be okay. But then the second passes, and Thomas is glad he’s a sensible man, because Billie absolutely despises being touched without consent if not absolutely necessary. Daud has become the one exception to the rule, but even that had taken a while to establish. So instead, Thomas simply asks: “Do you want to talk about it?”

She contemplates the question, eyes firmly locked on her tin to avoid looking at him. “I guess,” she eventually says, more to herself than to Thomas. “But this conversation does not leave this room.”

That last part definitely was directed at Thomas, and he hastens to reassure her. “Of course.”

“Because if you so much as make a peep,” she continues airily, “I will make sure your body is never found.”

He doesn’t doubt for a second that she means it. “Noted.”

She nods once, and though she still doesn’t meet his gaze, she speaks without reservations. “There was a bakery downtown, just off John Clavering. They sold Serkonan honey cakes. I liked them fine, for something so sweet, but my – my friend, she loved them, always got this big smile when she could have one. I bought some for her whenever I had coins to spare.”

Billie pauses for a long moment. “Your friend?” Thomas coaxes gently.

“Her name was Deirdre,” she says softly, “and I loved her with all my heart.”

The admission comes as a shock to Thomas – Billie never mentioned ever being in love before, though the name Deirdre does ring a bell somewhere in the back of his mind.

“We were on the Boulevard one day,” Billie continues quickly, barely pausing for breath, as if the dam holding in all this information simply broke, “and there was this coach drawn by gazelles coming our way. Fucking _gazelles_. Deirdre thought they were pretty. She wanted to go see them up close, and…”

She takes a deep breath that catches in her throat, and her next words come tumbling out in a rush. “The damn coach stopped for us, and Deirdre was delighted, went to pet a gazelle, and then out stepped the sons of the Duke of Serkonos and one of them tells the other that vermin like us should be put out of our misery and he hands his brother a stick and he… that bastard, he smashed it against her head and she, she just – she – ”

Billie smacks his hand away when he reaches for her, wiping furiously and fruitlessly at her eyes. “I snapped an ornament from the coach and drove it into that fucker’s eye as deep as it would go,” she spits out. “My first kill, and still my best.”

She lets out a shaky laugh that is completely devoid of mirth. “It all happened years ago, before I even met Daud. It’s not fucking news. But then Kent comes to me with these stupid honey cakes and I – well, just _fuck_.”

Her voice breaks, and Thomas makes a decision. “I’m going to hug you now,” he announces, giving her ample time to refuse him, but she doesn’t, so he draws her close to him and pretends her tears aren’t soaking through the thin shirt he chose to wear today.

After what feels like a long time, she pulls away. “I’m okay now,” she says, and then, after a beat: “Thank you.”

She has no business thanking him for anything after what he pulled during Fugue, but her displaced gratitude makes him suck up the courage to do right by her. “Look, Billie, I want to apologize,” he begins, voice more steady than he could have hoped, “for… for what happened. At Fugue.”

Thomas cannot quite decipher the look on her face. “You want to… apologize.”

“I shouldn’t have taken advantage of you when you were drunk. I value our friendship more than anything, and to disrespect you like that… I don’t know what I was thinking. Wasn’t thinking at all, probably,” he hurries to get the words out, to make sure she hears all he has to say. “I’m so sorry, Billie.”

He bows before her, pressing his forehead into his knees. “Please forgive me.”

For several long, agonizing seconds, the attic is silent but for the sound of Thomas’ heartbeat drumming in his ears so loudly they can probably hear it downstairs. And then Billie begins to _laugh_.

She laughs for a long time, until she’s clutching her side and there are tears in her eyes. And Thomas just sits there, still on his knees, watching her and feeling both relieved and peeved at once. It’s certainly not the reaction he was expecting.

When Billie’s chuckles die down, a wide smile remains. “Outsider’s balls, Thomas, you didn’t fucking ‘take advantage’ of me, alright? I wanted to,” she says confidently. “Besides, I wasn’t _that_ drunk.”

She was _that_ drunk, but Thomas is too busy marvelling at the fluttering feeling that erupted in his chest when she said ‘I wanted to’ that he doesn’t bother to point it out. Yet it isn’t long before the euphoria is damped by the fact that she still can’t seem to look into his eyes. And for that matter, a tiny voice in the back of his mind says nastily, why did she spend the past months running away from him if she didn’t think him a pervert?

“Billie,” he says gently, “look at me.”

She does, if only for a second, but that’s long enough for Thomas to see the emotion she’s clearly struggling with: guilt.

“Billie,” he says again, more forcefully this time, “why have you been avoiding me?”

She’s staring at her tin again. “Because I took advantage of you.”

She just keeps throwing him for a loop today. “But I wasn’t drunk.”

Billie shakes her head. “You don’t understand,” she mutters. “I hate Fugue because it was Deirdre’s birthday. We’d usually nick as much whiskey as we could and then… find a place where we wouldn’t be disturbed. Under the stars, preferably. Deirdre liked the fireworks.”

She pauses, sighing heavily. “Deirdre… Deirdre had blue eyes.”

He doesn’t understand, not at first. And then he remembers what she said to him that night, seconds before she kissed him and wiped his mind blank.

_You have pretty eyes, Thomas. Just like my Deirdre._

Oh.

“Oh,” he says.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Thomas hastens to say, because she did not just rip out his heart and he certainly does not feel like crying. “It was Fugue. Officially, it didn’t even happen.”

“Damnit, Thomas,” Billie says quietly, “why do you have to be so fucking decent?”

Upbringing, probably. You don’t get raised in a noble house without learning a thing or two about how to behave. He’s about to tell her as such, desperate for a change of subject, but then she _looks_ at him, and the guilt in her eyes is accompanied by an expression of lust that could make a grown man fall to his knees.

Thomas is glad he’s already on his knees.

He is the one to initiate it this time, though Billie is quick to take the dominance away from him, and they cannot be bothered to make it back to Billie’s little bedroom. No one ever comes into the attic anyway.

* * *

The thirty-seventh time it happens is the last time.

Dunwall has descended into utter chaos these past months. The plague alone was bad enough, but after they killed Empress Jessamine Kaldwin and effectively put Hiram Burrows in power, things really went to shit. The former Royal Spymaster has no idea how to rule the city, let alone the whole Empire, and it shows.

The Arcane Bond keeps them from getting the plague, thank Void, but the Whalers have felt the backlash of Jessamine’s murder just as much as anyone else, if not more. One, their contracts are drying up, because hardly anyone wants to spend thousands of coins on an assassin when their intended target could well be dead from plague within the month. Two, Daud is but a shadow of himself, the Knife of Dunwall blunted by guilt and regret. Three, Corvo Attano recently escaped from Coldridge and they all know he’ll be coming for them one day soon.

Four, Billie has been despairingly distant the past month, and Thomas has no idea why.

Over the past years, they’ve formed something akin to a relationship, though Thomas would never call it that to her face lest he fancy a punch in the gut. He retires to her bedroom whenever their schedules align, which is not nearly often enough, though always more than worth his while. Billie also comes to him whenever she needs to vent, or when she has good news to share, or when she just wants to be held for a while, loathe as she is to admit it.

Thomas wouldn’t call it a relationship, but it is, and he loves it. He loves _her_.

But now she’s steadily avoiding him again, something she hasn’t done since the second time it happened.

She claims she’s just busy, working with Daud to unravel the mystery named Delilah, but Thomas can tell it’s more than that. She’s on edge, she’s sulky, and she talks back to Daud in such a disrespectful manner it’s a miracle she still has her position as his second. It worries him.

And then, last night, she all but pulled him into her room and made him reach his climax three times before she was satisfied. Afterwards, she asked him ever so sweetly if he would do a job for her the following day, scouting for more information about Delilah across the city, just in case Barrister Timsh didn’t have any worthwhile intel.

So here he is, scouting around the Distillery District, trying to find out if the name Delilah comes up in the records of the Overseers, or with the Bottle Street Gang, or even at the Golden Cat.

He comes up with absolutely nothing.

Dejected, Thomas begins the long trek back to Rudshore, all the way on the other side of the city. It’s already well into the night when he finally returns home, bone-tired from his fruitless search and more than ready for a hot meal and a good night’s sleep.

But that’s not in the cards for him.

When he arrives, he knows something is wrong. The sentries aren’t in their usual spots, the thick scent of blood hangs in the air, and there’s – oh Void, there’s an Overseer sprawled out across the walkway, unseeing eyes staring up at the sky.

Thomas is in Daud’s office before he can think, his magical energy exhausted, and the sight of his Master – alive – is almost enough to make him collapse.

But his relief is short-lived. The Overseers attacked because Delilah sent them, they lost seven of their own in the siege, and…

And Billie betrayed them.

Daud names him her replacement in the same breath, and Thomas, unable to process everything at once, idly wonders how many more shocking developments his heart will be able to handle today.

He is ordered to find Lizzy Stride, and he does, gladly, because as long as he can think about Lizzy and her Dead Eels and the Hatters and Delilah, he doesn’t have to think about Billie.

So he finds Lizzy, helps Daud break into Coldridge, assists in reclaiming the Undine’s engine coil from the Hatters and fights his way through Brigmore Manor by Daud’s side, where he belongs.

Yet when the threat is dealt with, and Thomas lies in the bed that was once Billie's, in the room that was once Billie’s, where he’s shared so much of himself with Billie, he can’t help himself.

He weeps.

* * *

After Daud left, Thomas tried to lead them the best he could, but without their Master, his arcane abilities and his guidance, it was inevitable that the Whalers would fall apart sooner rather than later.

Karnaca isn’t a bad place to be, if you can forget about the bloodflies and the silver dust and the fact that the Duke of Serkonos is a pompous ass; it’s sunny, the food is good and the people are (mostly) kind. But Thomas came to Karnaca for one reason and one reason only: Daud.

Daud was born in Karnaca, fifty-something years ago. These are his roots. He’ll have to come back here sometime.

At least, that's what Thomas thought. But then he’s been here for years now, and he hasn’t so much as heard a whisper about the infamous Knife of Dunwall in all that time. He could be laying low in Tyvia, or stayed in Gristol, or sailed for Pandyssia, where his mother came from. Heck, he could very well be dead, for all Thomas knows, yet he’s never stopped looking for his old Master. He simply doesn’t know what else to do. His life is Daud’s, always has been and always will be. As long as there’s hope he’s alive, Thomas will keep searching.

But sometimes you find something you aren’t searching for at all.

He first spots her at the Campo Seta docks, arm in arm with an old man who sort of looks like Anton Sokolov, though that’s probably just the beard. Her hair is shorter and she’s… missing an _arm_ , but there is no doubt in his mind that he’s staring – gawking, more like – at Billie Lurk.

He spends just a second to long pondering whether or not he should follow her, and by the time he makes up his mind, she’s long gone.

The second time he sees her, she’s headed into the Old Batista District, leading a woman who is easily recognisable as Empress Emily Drexel Lela Kaldwin the First despite the scarf covering the lower half of her face. Why the Empress is willing to follow behind someone who was present the day her mother died, the very person who tethered her father in place while Daud completed his contract, is beyond him.

He follows this time, at an inconspicuous distance, convincing himself that he only wants to talk to Billie because she may know where Daud is, and not because the mere sight of her makes his heart pound and his palms sweaty. Billie doesn’t notice him; perhaps time has dulled her skills, perhaps her missing limb and eye hinder her more than it seems. Perhaps she’s just ignoring him, and that stings worse than he thought possible after a good fifteen years apart.

Emily and Billie split up somewhere down the road, the Empress marching with a purpose towards the Overseer Outpost, Billie exchanging easy greetings with the bouncer of the Crone’s Hand and slipping inside. Thomas tries to follow.

All he receives for his efforts is a black eye and the promise of death if he returns. He never sees her leave.

The third time he sees her, a month after, she shoves him up against the wall and holds a knife to his throat. “You were following me,” she snarls, trying to peer under the hood he’s grown accustomed to wearing in the dust-ridden parts of the city.

“Yes,” he rasps, throat bobbing against the cold kiss of steel, “I was.”

“Why?”

Thomas raises his left hand, slowly, and shows her the scar that dominates the back of it, the result of his father’s misguided attempt to cut away any chance of the Outsider’s influence long before he met Daud and actually fell under the Outsider’s influence.

Five long seconds pass, and then: “ _Thomas_?”

“Billie,” he returns, more calmly than he really feels, and the blade falls away from his throat almost immediately.

It’s… awkward, to say the least.

Thomas tries to think what to say, but asking how she’s been is too impersonal, telling her how he’s been is too personal, breaching the subject of her betrayal fifteen years ago seems redundant and inquiring about her time with the Empress isn’t something he really wants to know –

“If you were on the job, your target would be halfway to Pandyssia by now,” she says wryly, and combined with the smell of fish coming from the docks, it’s as if they’re right back where they started.

He settles on a topic. “I’m looking for Daud.”

Billie hesitates, but only for a second. “I know where he is,” she says, quietly. “I’m heading to see him soon. I don’t know what will happen. He may very well slit my throat the moment he sees me, and he’ll have every damn right, too. But… you can come with me, if you’d like.”

“Yes, please.”

The thirty-eight time it happens, they’re on a ship called the Dreadful Wale.

**Author's Note:**

> Special thank to [Cerasinus](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerasinus/pseuds/Cerasinus) for proofreading!


End file.
